Out of the Blackout by Robert Barnard

have to present proof that he was house-trained, Christian, or non-smoker or drinker? The whimsical requirements of landladies could be legion.
    â€˜Yes, of course,’ he said, in his most boyishly ingratiating tones. ‘It would be quite easy for me to come round.’
    â€˜Provided it’s clear I’m making no promises,’ said the voice, with a nagging, grudging insistence. ‘Would fiveish suit you? Then Len would be home.’
    â€˜That’s fine,’ said Simon. ‘Fiveish it is.’
    When he put the phone down he felt very pleased with himself, and nervously excited. He had another brisk walk around the Zoo, struck up a friendship with the squirrel monkeys which was to last all his working life, and ate a goodish lunch at the Restaurant. But by three he could contain his impatience no longer. He walked along Albany Street to the Regent’s Park tube, and took a ticket to the Angel, Islington.
    He had his Geographers’ London with him, and he purposely avoided Miswell Terrace. He did not want to be seen hanging around before his appointment, and the form behind that voiceon the phone could well be a peerer, a discreet puller-apart of lace curtains. He walked instead around every other street in the vicinity. Most of them were rows of terraced houses, built early in the last century. They were not unattractive, but their neglected state made them appear skimpy and mean. Many were down at heel, some derelict, and there lay over the district a miasma of half-heartedness, littleness, failure. The unlovely council flats were better: jollier, more open. In one of the streets there was a cheerful, dirty collection of market barrows, with friendly, untrustworthy sellers. He lingered round Sadler’s Wells. Elizabeth Fretwell in The Girl of the Golden West. No time for that tonight: he would get the 8.50 train back to Leeds. He turned away from the posters and went back to the dingy streets of terraced houses. Really, though they once had greater pretensions, now their effect was not unlike Farrow Street, Paddington. The Simmeters, presumably, had moved sideways, rather than up or down. What, he wondered, had made them move at all?
    At a quarter to five he stood at the end of Miswell Terrace. One more of what he already had seen many of. He could see No. 25: as dank and dejected as the rest. At ten to five he was ringing on its doorbell.
    Just when he was considering ringing again, a door opened somewhere inside the house, and light penetrated the mottled glass of the front door. He heard heavy footsteps, saw a looming shadow on the other side of the glass. Two locks were turned, and then the door was opened.
    She was a heavy old woman, in a shapeless black woollen dress, with a plum-coloured cardigan over it, and slippers on her feet. She was now fat, but Simon guessed she must once have been a fine figure of a woman, in a massive kind of way. Her cheeks were now round, and there were rolls of fat around her neck, but the impression she gave was not comfortable. The mouth was hard, the eyes calculating, and behind all the flabbiness Simon sensed a lifetime of grim purpose and iron will.
    â€˜So you’ve come,’ she announced.
    She squeezed her mouth into no similitude of a smile, but from the way she stood regarding him, right hand on hip, Simon could have sworn he sensed a silent satisfaction that he was white.
    â€˜Yes, I’ve come.’
    â€˜What’s your name, then?’
    He smiled, and watched her as he said: ‘Simon Cutheridge.’
    No flicker passed across that hard face. Simon felt sure that the name meant nothing to her.
    â€˜And where are you from?’
    â€˜Leeds,’ said Simon. He had already decided that for the moment he would say nothing of Yeasdon.
    â€˜Could hear it was the North somewhere,’ said the old woman, with a trace of contempt she took no trouble to disguise. It’s common knowledge, her manner seemed to say, that